Len Webster's 'Retrospective' Poem by Len Webster

The night noisy with cicada shrills,
Distant voices from other village compounds.
Here the old woman talks to her hemiplegic daughter,
Whose childless status hangs heavily like irrational guilt.

Into this compound used to stray the life of the village.
An outhouse on the road was built to create a shop,
Where the house SOMTAM was a modest sensation
And local whisky a welcome evening treat.

That sprang from my first arrival here,
Twenty-six years to the week that holds fragile memories
Constantly being ousted by self-reproving feelings
Whose very negativity destroys the good, the positives,

A self-willed destruction imploding on me
As an irrational rationalism takes over, echoes of comments by others
Who never travelled this route, too afraid to leave
The security of their illusions.

When optimism and joy fail, they drag down the best of us,
The most malign prejudices corrupting and festering
Like excrement that cannot be nicely hidden.



Chiang Mai 2011